Understanding Blended Learning: A Comprehensive Guide
Muhammad Zubair Naseer
Search Engine Optimization Specialist at Hashed System
You may be wondering about “what is blended learning?” Well, blended learning combines traditional offline and online knowledge in a way that both complement each other.
It offers individuals the best of both worlds. For instance, a learner might choose to attend face-to-face classes and then supplement them by completing online multimedia coursework. It allows learners to attend class once a week physically, and then they would be free to go at their own pace without sweating about scheduling issues.
We will discuss in detail what this learning entails and how to make the most of it.
What is Blended Learning?
As blended learning combines traditional methods of education and eLearning to create a more flexible experience, it creates dynamic opportunities for students outside the classroom.
The classroom setting provides the opportunity for role-playing with instant feedback from instructors. In comparison, online learning allows students to have personalized, self-paced learning with interactive media like games, quizzes, tutorials, videos, and other social media components. Students can access these eLearning features on their smartphones or tablets from the Learning Management System home page.
Why Choose It?
Educators at higher and lower institutions have organically adopted blended learning to help students in and out of the classroom.
Blended learning builds a truly integrated classroom that meets the needs of every student. Keeping learners engaged, motivated, and stimulated assists educators in being more effective and efficient. Here are the apparent benefits of blended learning;
Personalized Learning
Blended learning considers every type of learner, whether they want to learn in a traditional classroom, prefer to learn online, or want to try a mixture of both. Without the limitations of in-person learning or an online course, blended learning takes advantage of various methods so that the educational content can be customized to students and optimized for the subject matter they are studying. While it is almost impossible to fully translate face-to-face training to digital content, it’s still possible to restructure the existing content for online delivery to supplement the ongoing activity.
Latest Learning Trends
The blended approach utilizes online and offline technologies to enable instructors to seamlessly adopt the latest learning trends and modalities into their curriculum. Teachers can also use built-in reporting features in Learning Management System for in-depth and data-driven insights into the learners’ progress and success.
Reduced Costs
In-person learning may seem like a cheaper option when compared to online learning, however, you need to consider the actual cost of traditional classroom sessions. For students who are also working, in-class training means time away from work, paying educators, etc. A blended online learning approach lowers travel costs and can be used multiple times, reducing educators' burdens.
Fun & Interactive
Raising your hand and not being called on by the instructor is frustrating. In addition, it impacts the overall engagement of students in a classroom. However, blended learning offers more ways for learners to interact with educators and learning materials. It is an interactive experience in every sense of the word.
Diverse Reach & Customized Experience
Institutions worldwide are striving to make learning universal and accessible. Travel and language interpretations pose significant challenges, but blended eLearning can easily address these problems and can bring together students from different locations in its virtual space.
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Learning Models
Teaching a diverse group of learners in traditional classroom learning can be challenging as it’s almost impossible to tailor the learning experience to individual needs. A blended model helps you to personalize the subject themes to time considerations, learning techniques, and personal preferences. But, to implement such models, you must change how you think about teaching and learning.
Here are some blended learning methods that you can use.
Blended Learning: Best Practices
Blended learning is effective for covering a lot of courses material with independent and engaged students. But how do you encourage students to take charge of their education? You can maximize a combined at-home and in-class effort by putting best practices and blended learning strategies to work with the rest of your program.
A. Explain The Importance of Blended Learning
If you do not tell students the reasoning behind why you combined independent and face-to-face learning, you run the risk of losing them from the get-go. Therefore, stakeholders involved in the educational process should take the time to explain why they chose blended learning as a mode of knowledge delivery. For this, you also need to respect every student’s journey to fully engage them in the learning process.
B. Activities for Everyone!
To make the blended approach successful, you must have diverse activities for every student. To make this happen, try to have everything for everyone. For example, some learners prefer to learn by reading, while others learn best when doing things. You cannot use one one-size-fits-all approach, instead, you must pay attention to individual details and consider the needs of each learner. So include diverse activities like group discussions with or without tools for collaborative learning, games, online quizzes, role-playing drives, and every other method you can think of that will enhance user engagement.
C. The Tool of the Century!
Learners today have the most powerful tool at their disposal; the internet.
Why would you write questions on a whiteboard when you can show an engaging video? Also, ask learners to watch videos on their own time and then engage them in class discussions the next day. Learning becomes more interactive and practical when students explore stuff on their own, so why tell them a fact when they can actually research it and report it back in class?
How To Implement Blended Learning?
Pause and consider the benefits of your training and what you want the students to learn. You most likely already know this since you created instructor-led sessions. Then, use the experience and instructors’ knowledge to ask important questions like; where the problem lies.
Think of the aspects of your program that are difficult for you and your students and require practice to master. For example, dry, factual information, technical specifications, and compliance information. This is your opportunity to get a foot in the door and take instructor-led sessions to the next level by developing blended eLearning techniques for students to learn and practice on their own time.
To implement both online and offline training interventions set up a Learning Management System that can track the progress of students and the success of learning interventions.
When you implement your blended learning program, your students will thank you for offering education that best suits their needs.
Love it!